The weekend before Christmas we took Gavin for a ride on The Polar Express, and to visit Santa at the North Pole! Gavin had a blast playing in the snow and riding on a train (his first time). We’re definitely going to head back to the Polar Express in the years to come!

The Grand Canyon Railway in Williams, AZ.

A really neat old train.

Gavin having fun playing in the snow.

Sipping on some hot chocolate (Gavin calls it hot coffee).

A special present from Santa!

Mommy and Gavin snuggling.

Our silly little guy.

A view of the train depot.

The weather is just about perfect now in Phoenix, so we decided to head out to the Desert Botanical Garden for some nice scenery and a walk. During our visit we were able to visit the Monarch Butterfly Exhibit, which will be wrapping up soon since it’s getting too cold outside for the butterflies. Gavin had a lot of fun searching for items on the kid’s scavenger hunt, and picked a big plastic ant as his prize for completing it! The garden is a great place and we’ll definitely be heading back soon!

We’ve been in Seattle for about a year now, and last Sunday marked our 2nd Easter away from home. We would’ve loved to spend time with the rest of our family, but the flights to So Cal were so darn expensive. We still had a great Easter on our own and Gavin had a blast.

We started things off on Saturday by decorating hard boiled eggs. Gavin started with a nice multicolored egg, but with his second egg moved into the dunking phase. He kept dunking his egg, and hand, into each color for a good 30 minutes until they we’re both a nice dark green/purple color.

On Sunday morning Gavin woke up and found a surprise from the Easter bunny!

After he loaded up on candy he was ready to go on an egg hunt! The Easter bunny hid eggs all around and Gavin ran around searching and gathering them up. This year was his first real Easter egg hunt, and he loved it!

Chanin worked her usual magic in the kitchen and whipped up deviled eggs, potato cheese casserole, green beans with bacon, honey glazed ham, green salad with homemade dressing and rolls. Later, we finished it off with strawberry shortcake. Mmmmm…

This past Sunday morning we woke up to snow here in Seattle! Since we grew up in Southern California, and own a house near Phoenix, we’re definitely not used to seeing snow outside our windows. However, it was a welcome surprise and we were all pretty dang excited!

We rushed the little guy out of bed and bundled him up in many layers of clothing (long undies, warm pants, sweater, winter coat, scarf, mittens, and snow boots).

Gavin had a blast playing in the snow and I had fun throwing little snow balls at him! The word on the street is that tonight/tomorrow we’re going to get even more snow, and they’re recommending that everyone stay home!

For our 5th Wedding Anniversary, I wanted to surprise Chanin with something different and a little adventurous. After dropping Gavin off to spend some time with his cousins, we headed to Seattle Seaplanes for a scenic flight around Seattle. We were both a bit nervous since this was our first flight in a small aircraft, a Cessna 206, but it turned out we had nothing to fear!

We hopped aboard the little plane and taxied out to the “runway.” The runway always changes and is dependent on the boat traffic on the lake.

Once the Captain saw a break in the traffic he revved up the engine and we were soon airborne!

We flew the route below, but not in the same order. Overall, we got a really nice birds eye view of the city and surrounding areas.

After the flight we made our way to Ray’s Boathouse for dinner and an amazing view. Between the two of us we enjoyed salad, salmon, sablefish, a crab cake, sturgeon, nutella mouse cake, Caramel Pot de Crème (basically fancy caramel custard), a brewski, a fancy cocktail, and coffee. Mmmmm, I’m getting hungry just thinking about it.

We had a great time celebrating our 5th Anniversary and are looking forward to many more!

For our 5 year wedding anniversary, we decided to post a few of our favorite pictures from our special day, now a half a decade in our past. As we gaze at these happy, joy-filled photographs, it seems like only yesterday we were reciting our vows to each other before our family and most treasured friends, making our nuptial promises and confirming our commitment to one another. However, when we look back and reminiscence over the weeks, months and years we have spent together, we realize that in this time, we have already begun to collect a lifetime of invaluable memories. It’s hard to believe that we’ve managed to pack so many memorable events in to such a relatively short amount of time; but we have, and we hope to squeeze in many, many more in the years to come. We are truly blessed to have built a life together.